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..and reasons to love Britain

Much as I relish living in the States, there are some things that Britain just does better. Like tea, beer, mediaeval architecture and gay marriage, to name but four.

While the US continues to be convulsed by the 'culture wars', Britain has to all intents and purposes legalised gay marriage with hardly a peep. This morning's UK papers fail to work themselves into a moral lather. The Telegraph sees it as a business opportunity (of course), and the Daily Mail talks about the number of couples signing up (expect gushing reports on 'celebrity' weddings), and the Times puts it in the context of its own venerable tradition of marriage announcements (so British).

Even the British blog world, where right wing voices are not shy of bemoaning the inexorable cultural decline of the nation, seems curiously silent on the issue (at least according to Google's blog search).

Why the difference between the UK and the US? Partly it's religion. There simply isn't the strong conservative religious lobby in the UK for whom gay marriage has become such a touchstone issue as it has in the US. Then there is politics. The British Conservatives have, sensibly, seen the gay marriage issue as being about actually spreading traditional values, rather than subverting them.

The anti-gay-marriage pundits have, in the end, fallen silent in the British media because they failed to capture the mood of the nation. Britain seems at ease with itself on this issue. Would that it were the same here in the US.